When I read what Eckhart said in his book "The Power of Now" in early 2009 and I began to put his methods into practice in my daily life and consciousness, my old patterns and being tossed to-and-fro in my life situations,
. *Stunning* By the beginning of 2009 (in March), i'd had 63 entire house moves in my life. I was 48 years old... That's
too many moves. Many of these moves from 1985 onwards were precipitated because my ex-husband was tracking me... trying to find my whereabouts. I lived in terror for a decade. His intention was to kill me... A very, very bad and twisted man...
Note: He perfectly fit my internalized unexamined notions of what a man is: Psychotic and a psychopath - ie: It was
me who created this concept based on who I saw my father to be, as a young child. My husband (ex-) was the perfect fulfilment of what lay hidden deep inside of me. He was white collar middle-management, unlike my father who was a farmer. Inside of them, they were both the same. I lived in terror of my father until I was 8 years old when my mother finally divorced my father. I lived in hiding for over a decade when my ex-husband threatened many times, to end my life. Parallels. The appearance of the externals were different. The underlying personalities were the same. The root of re-creating those personality types in men close to me, lay deep inside of
me. It was
myself who was the fundamental cause. These things needed to be examined.
For the first 2 years after leaving my ex-husband, even my own siblings didn't know where I was living - only my Mum knew. It was way too dangerous for me, or for any of my family or old friends to know where I was. Last seen: "He" was wielding two very long-bladed kitchen knives and bailed up my Christian friends, demanding to know where I was. He's was a huge 6'2" (188cm) timber mill worker at that time. Extremely intimidating. Finally the police kept a watch on him all night until he went to his girlfriend's house and settled there... (June 1985). Meanwhile... down on the farm, in hiding with my sister, the police had instructed my brother-in-law to keep his .22 loaded ("aim for a leg") and to let the farm dogs run loose for the night - Usually they'd be kennelled up down at the cowshed. That night, they were let free to run around the house... three of them. It was a highly volatile situation. In leaving that relationship, I had to let everything and everyone go and start again, which is really difficult when you've got a 2-year-old and a little baby as well. Please see how I got out,
here >>
From the middle of 2006 until the end of 2009, I moved house at least every 6 months. Nothing was working for me - nasty flatmates/housemates, dangerous situations involving meth-amphetimines and other drugs, landlords deciding to sell their rental property, a head injury guy in one place which was very difficult to live with, a few changes of jobs - one in a different local town as well...
My son (aged mid-20s at the time) was in despair of me... It was him who took on the burden of helping me move each time as he had access to a work van. I had nine moves in 3.5 years. He couldn't take seeing me constantly shifting and hitting a brick wall every time, only 3-4 months after i'd moved into the next house. It WAS horrible 😖😖😖 I was playing out a script that I had no power to unwrite. It was really out of hand.
In the last apartment I was in, with somebody who I thought was a friend (but found out she was not), I started reading
"The Power of NOW" by Eckhart Tolle. People said good things about it, and I thought "Meh... Yeah maybe." But I gave myself to the concepts and principles in the book anyway.
I could only read 1 or 2 pages a day, because the concepts are so "dense" - Very challenging, very difficult to get your mind around, very difficult to try to understand what Eckhart was saying, very different to "normal" ways of thinking...
I was very aware that I was probably "rewiring" my brain - as in, "forcing" the neuron cells in my brain to disconnect from old receptors (the ones that were creating bad patterns and
perceptions for me), and through reading Eckhart's book in this way, I was "forcing" those neurons to go to new receptors that wouldn't keep re-creating pain in my life. This wasn't painful (of course), but I just had to go really slow with absorbing these very new ideas. I just stayed open to the possibility that "something else" was going to happen. Every day for around 2 months, I strived with the book (wrestled with the concepts really), to try to really understand what
Eckhart Tolle was saying...
It was later in the year, in August 2009 that I began to see the out-working (miraculously as far as I was concerned) of me moving my thinking into the way that Eckhart describes in his book
The Power Of Now. In September 2009, I moved into my current apartment, and I have been here ever since - coming up eight years this September !!
For me, and the patterns I had created and co-created
ALL of my life, this is an absolute miracle !! In reading Eckhart's book, the old patterns I had were and are broken!
Eight years in this house completely busts my record of five years spent in one place, from August 1973 to December 1978 (5.4 years) - THAT is how long it's been since I was last settled to any degree. And that only happened when my own mother, completely exhausted of moving with me (she was a single mother also with no/few solutions for her life except God), put her foot down and declared to the Universe/God, "I am staying here so Bronwyn can get a stable high school education." It was social housing, but thankfully the house was in a quiet street with mixed working and beneficiary families of many socio-economic backgrounds. It was great.
I am extremely grateful for that declaration to the Universe that my mother made in 1973. It made all the difference to my life, with many opportunities in music opening to me as a consequence, eg: I won a classical singing scholarship from the Lion's Club in my town after I sung the lead role in a Gilbert and Sullivan musical (colleratura) in our senior school production in 1978. I had support from the wider community through school and church associations. I entered a number of singing competitions that year also - not through support from my own family (which was broken) but through other people in the town who saw me and my potential, who took me by the hand and showed me where the opportunities lay. My mother was still very mentally unstable and continued to be for the rest of her life, until her passing in 2008.
This stability of "not moving" at least, made all the difference. But my internal pattern was still the same... "Move... Move... Move..." and "Danger... Danger... Danger". It was my pattern. As mentioned above, my father had been a very dangerous man and emotionally had broken all of my four older siblings. They suffer to this day. I continually manifested the "Danger" patterns resulting from family and marital trauma for 48 long years! Horrible 😕 Life for me has been very different since allowing Eckhart's words to speak to my being.
This seems to be the "healing process" ... For us to put in the time and effort, and to figure things out for ourselves - To sit with ourselves, to write, to reflect, to "flip cards" (Tarot Cards) as I did for years, to go to as many courses, groups, seminars, lectures and soul-growth groups as possible... I attended the spiritualist church from time to time, chanted Buddhist mantra "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo" twice a day for four years and sung Yogic kirtan (devotional songs) intermittently for around three years... I went to Wiccan circle groups, did full moon drumming, and attended an entire weekend, deep, intensive, "Life Change" course (very deep). I did breath work (rebirthing), which led to the beginning of some extremely deep healing after accessing pre-birth memories and forgotten toddler memories... Horrific 😖 How can people do such things to their very young children? 😢😢
I even went to "formal" mental heath system meetings (hospital outpatients), and accessed psychologists and other mental health services at different points along the way. I read "self-help" books (recommended: Louise Hay, Shakti Gawain), I listened to and read testimonies, and watched Oprah Winfrey during the 1990s. I did everything - in my effort to find the keys to unlock the doors to my healing. I was determined... very determined. I was so deeply unhappy that in my mid-30s, I decided I would not live the rest of my life that way any longer... I was going to pull out all the stops and find answers for myself. I was sick of being depressed, suicidal and throwing up (vomiting) every other day for around 7 years from the mid-1990s (huge anxiety attacks I couldn't manage). I decided I simply wasn't going to live the rest of my life this way... So I began to look for my healing. I was not going to be unhappy anymore... This was way before I knew how deep the rabbit hole went. I had no idea of all the things that lay hidden in the forgotten "subtext" of my life 😓😓 There was a lot of uncovering to do.
It's no wonder I suffered from ongoing PTSD for "no apparent reason". My life simply didn't work. It had been going on like this since early childhood... Living in terror - and what I didn't know was that it was me myself who kept creating it, unwittingly, unwillingly. All of "that" was my conditioning. I had no control over "it".
Suicidal? Of course... But I had two young children to try to be there for, so ending my life really wasn't an option for me. My life was hell. I was in hell... for years 😢 (my poor children) *many regrets*
_ _ _
Nobody can give us the answers to our own life. Nobody can tell us what to think or how to do "it" - that is, to reclaim the
recovery of our whole life. My whole life has now been "Re-Covered" - I had to go back and cover it all again, to figure out what the hell had happened to me. It was painful with many bleak and emotionally lonely days, particularly when I was confronted on two separate occasions with re-living sexual abuse (digital sodomy) perpetrated on my little body when I was around 2 year old. But this seems to be the only way we can do this deep work, by being brutally honest with ourselves. And when you cut with the BS and can look directly into your own face without the lies, then begins the integration and acceptance of whatever has happened to you. And then it's fine... It doesn't hurt you anymore. You have re-solved it. So....
Continue to challenge yourself.
Continue in your determination to be happy.
I did. And I am now one of the most stable and happy people I know.
The old adage is true...
"And this too shall pass."
It's true. But for many people such as myself, you really have to work at it. It's hard and it's rough and grainy - like a children's slide you've decided to sit on, that you realize all too late is embedded with roading stones. The experience is very unforgiving. The rewards of your bravery? Enormous!
After we permission ourselves to get all cut up (again) and get bashed about emotionally... and on some days we know we aren't even going to be facially recognisable to our friends or family (the pain is so great) ... Then after all that - We heal!
I am a living testimony to this process. It could very well take you years. Are you worth it? I hope your answer to yourself is "Yes I AM!". And after that breaking down and building up again, you will live many, many more years absolutely contented in your own skin, and you will be HAPPY !!! 100% happy!
The process seems to be: We bumble along, joining the dots, trying this and that until we find things that work for us, cry our tears, experience our pain, lostness and defeat... Reflect... reflect... reflect... (internal work). And yeah - At times it's really exhausting, but there IS an end to it - I can promise you that!
"And this too shall pass."
"Life" is
our own battle to win or lose. We are
all potential winners! Eckhart Tolle has amazing insights, knowledge and techniques to absolutely, diametrically change where you are sitting right now.
"The Power of NOW" is not a book you can "just read", for it to be effective. It's a book you have to apply - into your daily life and into your ways of thinking... little by little. I am sure this book will help many people who read this article.
If you want to talk to me more about what you are experiencing, please follow this link which will take you through to the "Bookings" page on this website. Thanks, Bron.
#EckhartTolle @ The Power of Now
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